Sakakawea - June 7
- Jun 7
- 2 min read
Lake Sakakawea is fully open for business…with the exception of a few boat ramps, more on that later. The chilly temperatures in May pushed the progressions forward a couple of weeks this year after on-schedule spawning, but we are now in the middle of a classic late spring or early summer pattern. Once we did get some warmer weather, it created the usual temperature gradients between the shallows and the depths which is necessary to congregate the fish and fire up a shallow casting bite. The major bays and the upper river section have been much warmer than the main lake in the mid and lower section, and the shallow water on the flats is much warmer than the offshore structure and the basin depths. So the active fish are feeding in about 2 to 8 feet of water in the spots you would expect to find them this time of year. Seeing this typical pattern materialize was very welcome after such a goofy June last year in which it seemed as though this season was all but skipped over.
As of today, our dominant presentation has been jigs with minnows, and plastics are starting to work depending on the day. If I had to guess, I think this bite will probably last another week to 10 days before we switch to dragging nightcrawlers around. Given the lower water levels, the lake has the potential to warm quickly if we get a lot of heat, but so far that is not the situation. A lot of the areas we are finding active fish this week are in water temperatures of 62 to 65°, and a lot of the main lake water is somewhere in the 50s on the lower end, probably a touch warmer in the middle section.
As for lake access, the Army Corps of Engineers has lowered their forecast since my spring preview report. The targeted rise for the summer is around 3 feet, and to get any more than that we would probably need to see some solid rain events in the upper end of the Missouri river system. There are definitely ramps that are out of play this year, and fisher people will be a little more congregated than we are used to, but there are still places to access the lake in every major section at this point. That rise is starting to occur slowly over the last week, seeing about an inch or two increase for the last five or six days. We are currently sitting at 1827 for elevation, which is 23 feet below full. Getting to 1830 would be pretty helpful for a handful of the major ramps.
If anyone would like to get out fishing with me this year, and June is locked up, but I have some openings in July and August, and you can always book fall trips early in which we can be flexible around weather if things go south. Here are a few videos from the season so far, including a couple of videos about boat ramps which might be of interest this year!
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